Rosenberg Associates Blog
Marc Rosenberg, CPALast week, we received several comments to our post on mandatory retirement, evidence that this concept is indeed controversial. This week, let’s drill down further. Firms’ positions on mandatory retirement vary widely. According to the 2016 Rosenberg Survey, 88% of firms over $20M have mandatory retirement compared to only 60% of $2-10M firms. My mother…
Virtually everyone agrees that being able to differentiate your firm is cool. Yet, very few local CPA firms are in fact, different. To be fair, the nature of what CPAs do naturally makes them look more alike than different. But when I think about the 1,000+ firms I have consulted with over 20 years, many…
Why do only 20% of all CPA firms make it to the second generation? In short, firms suck at succession planning. (1) Partners often lack effective mentoring skills, (2) Very little accountability for mentoring, (3) Partners fail to give mentoring the same high level focus as their client activities, (4) Firms have inadequate leadership development…
In last week’s post we identified long-term steps your firm can take to insure you’ll maximize your return on a potential sale. This week we’d like to follow up with short-term specifics to be addressed when you’re more actively considering an eventual merger. In the 2-3 years prior to starting the sales process: Minimize your…
QUESTION FROM A READER: In your interview of BKD MP Ted Dickman, he revealed that his firm’s partner buyout plan pays retiring equity partners 2x annual compensation paid out over 10 years. Our firm, with revenue of $10 million, pays 3x compensation. In the past five years we have retired two partners, each of whom…
The following questions were posed to us recently in an interview with our colleagues at Convergence Coaching. Whose leadership style do I admire the most? The common thread to the three leaders below is this: Many people love the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” These leaders would say: “If it doesn’t need…
A CPA firm manager writes: I am a 32 year-old manager at an 8-partner firm who has no clue what it takes to become a partner. The partners never share any information regarding buy-in, etc. It’s really hard to plan for the future without all the facts. Since the firm was created only one person…
A frequent subject my Chicago-based small firm roundtable group has addressed over the years is the difficulty they have in recruiting staff with the talent and ambition to eventually take over their firms. At a recent meeting I posed this question in a deliberately provocative manner, as I sometimes do to elicit a spirited response,…
When as many as 80% of all CPA firms never make it to the second generation, you’d expect succession planning to be a hot agenda item at partner retreats. We always advise hiring an outside retreat facilitator to moderate your discussion, but in the event you’ve opted to have one of your partners lead the…
Years ago a mentor told me that in negotiations, you should always put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Steven Covey’s legendary Seven Habits of Highly Effective People reiterated this in Habit 5: “Use empathic listening to be genuinely influenced by a person, who compels her to take an open mind to being influenced by…
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